


love can tell a million stories

by amitye



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Banter, Elia is an anxious mess and worried about the Pariarchy TM, F/M, Flirting, Misuse of Italian folklore but it's okay because it's my own, Secret Rendezvous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 14:56:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13149060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amitye/pseuds/amitye
Summary: Elia and Arthur meet again after Elia's journey to Westeros





	love can tell a million stories

"Hush, old girl." He whispered to the old black mare as she tied her to the pole. Midnight, one of many victims of his brother's strange taste in names (doubtlessly to compensate for for the fact he hadn't been the one receiving Dawn - he had to rememeber to make that joke with Elia someday) was far too scared of riding at night for an horse with that name, but in the end he soothed her and sat crosslegged in the sand, looking towards Sunspear. She was late. Unladylike, he made a mental note of telling her, but his heart was throbbing in his chest as he fidgeted with Dawn's hilt, ready to take it out. Why did she had to be like that - Martell stubborn where there was no reason to be - he'd never know. What did she want to prove going out at night like this alone he'd never know - she didn't need to pretend she was strong for him, that she could fight like her brothers. She was a real lady, she didn't need it. And he couldn't be her knight if he was not here with her. He stubbornly wrenched his thoughts away from the worst imaginable and looked up at the stars, until he heard the soft whistle and saw Elia running towards him, breathing heavily, with just a thin veil dress shielding from the night.  
He jumped on his feet just enough to catch her in her arms, laughing like a child and absolutely uncaring of anything.  
He swore and wrapped his cloak around her.  
"Do I have to act like your mother? Look at you, you are freezing." He said with a smile.  
Elia scoffed, but not enough to erase the wild grin from her face.  
"Oh Arthur, I missed the wind on my skin so much. In the Reach it's almost as hot as here, but you have to be covered up like a septa all the same."  
He took her hand to kiss, but she tugged at it and shoved him closer, kissing him on the mouth instead. He kissed her back and she - little Martell snake - pulled away at once, her eyes flashing with laughter. "Unknightly." She sentenced.  
"You started, you shameless wench."  
It was all a part of that game, of meeting out of doors when he could very easily have come to the castle and taken her to walk in the Water Gardens, so much princess Loreza thought him reliable. Pretending they could ever, in some way, be the rebellious ones of the family as if they weren't the oldest, as if they weren't supposed to know better, as if there weren't already Ashara and Oberyn flirting with disaster enough for the entire family.  
How did you like your journey? He almost asked, but he knew that if he gave her such a question his Elia would have been capable of talking all night. He knew he should ask straight about the aim of the trip, that they both knew, but he couldn't bear it and asked instead. "Have you found any stories you like?"  
He had discovered her little collection when he had first met her in the library of Sunspear, when ser Lewyn had dispatched him to read the rest of the afternoon to punish him for a botched joust and he had been so bored he would have started a conversation with the blood oranges that hung outside the windows.  
"Do you have your lessons too?" He had asked, and she had shook her head haughtily, surrounded by books and scribbling madly. "I am looking for stories." She was fourteen then, as old as his little romantic Ashara was now and like her she had the conviction her betrothal was the matter of greatest weight in the world, as she explained she was marrying out of Dorne (she said that with a sense of importance, restraining herself not to giggle in excitement) and needed good stories to tell her future children."  
"Dornish stories?" He had asked then, since what he would do in her shoes would be hoarding stories to remind himself of home.  
"No" she had said. "Stories are to teach you how to live, and my children are not going to live like Dornish."  
He had known he was special since then, and he remembered that now as she played with the ribbons of his cloak, up in her thoughts.  
"Northeners' stories are no fun once you're grown up.  
You would not like them at least. They are mostly knights and rescuing maidens and living happily ever after. Fun for the knights, not much for the maidens."  
He put on an offended face. "I am a knight."  
Elia grimaced "Yes, the Warrior knows who had the bright idea."  
"So you know, I earned it as a squire with the blisters of my feet and the sweat of my brow. What has princess Nymeros here done with her life?"  
He regretted his choice of words immediately when a shadow fell on Elia's sweet face - you blockhead, with a warhammer for a tongue - but she shook it away quickly and smiled brightly. "I am going to be the lady of Casterly Rock and lord over all of the Westerlands with an iron fist."  
"A golden fist." He corrected her and Elia pouted, affronted by the offense to her analogies  
"I'm not really doing it anyway. Tywin Lannister doesn't want me for a daughter in law, thank the Mother. Can you imagine? Tywin Lannister." She made a very pretty and witty grimace and it hid the bitter rejection in her voice very well.  
"You still have not told me your story."  
She sighed and curled up, hugging her knees. "I'll tell you a story from Oldtown, is that alright?"  
"Reachmen" he scoffed with mock patriotic rage, but she ignored him.  
"A long time ago, before even our great-grand mothers can remember, a great fleet of Ironborn was sieging the beautiful harbor of Oldtown-"  
"When have the Ironborn had enough people to siege Oldtown?"  
She flapped her hand impatiently and ended up maybe accidentally smacking him on his head. "That's not the point, you stupid. Do you not know how stories work? There was a siege of Oldtown, and many brave men had already died to try to bring it to an end. One of them had just been married, and left a young widow whose name was Stamyra. Stamyra lived alone in their little house by the harbor and fished to survive, and everyday at sea saw the ships of the people who'd killed her husband roam about. One day as she walked down the harbor with her fish to sell, Stamyra looked to the horizon and let an horrible cry and collapsed on the pier. The other fishwives rushed by her side and splashed her with seawater, but when she came to her eyes were wild and changed and when a crone asked if she might be with child, she answered that there was no chance. "I am a widow, and there is nothig for me in this world" she said, and rushed home. For three days, nobody saw her. On the third night she went to the arbor in her husband's breeches, her feet bare and a flaming lantern in her hand and a bucket of pitch in the other. She took her little fishing boat and went where the master ship of the Ironborn was. The guards saw her and cried out, but she said nothing and went on with her work. When night came, burnt and ruined ships were scattered around the harbor, and the ones remaining sailed back to the Iron Islands, their frightened crews still huddling around pots of soup and telling stories of a strange long haired ghosts. Stamyra's little fishing boar was found charred adrift, but she never came home and her townfolk made her a statue of her in the square, just as she had been, with her dress billowing and the lantern in her hand."  
She let the silence be filled with just with the wind of their clothes for a moment, then she clered her throath and took his hand.  
"You like it?"  
Arthur thought about it for a moment, trying to see a riddle in her words. In those moments he really wished he had spent a bit more of his childhood on his books instead of swinging swords around all day. "Yes, it's a good story."  
"I don't like it very much. I don't like when it ends with death."  
"But this is an hero's death." He was supposed to like stories that ended in noble deaths.  
Elia frowned. "I don't know. You have to sacrifice something to die and hero's death, and what do you sacrifice if you think you have nothing?" She hesitated, and the went on. "I think it should have been an hero's death, though. I think Northeners have strange ideas and that's why they tell it this way, but you don't suddenly have nothing just because you are a widow. Are there no parents, no siblings, does that not matter at all? And there's so much from life to enjoy. At least I hope so. Do you think I'll have still something, if I lose my husband? That I would not be nothing at all?" There was a frightened espression in her eyes as she bit her lip and she clutched his hand for support.  
What happened to you on this trip? Who are you to marry? he wanted to ask, but he did not dare. He wanted to tell her a girl with the gift of stories, of wonder, of happiness could never stop finding things to live for, but he was afraid he'd jumble it up and make it ridiculous and unpoetic. So he patted Dawn's hilt and smiled. "I'm going to be here to make damn sure you do."  
She arched her eyebrows. "All the time? Highly impractical." She said and laughed and pushed him down in the sand.


End file.
